


Falling

by noveltea



Category: Gabriel (Film)
Genre: F/M, Genderbending, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-20
Updated: 2010-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-06 12:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noveltea/pseuds/noveltea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Always-a-girl!Gabriel. "You threw me far from grace... and now I fall onto it." Written for the genderbenderfic prompt-a-thon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling

**Author's Note:**

> All characters and ideas associated with Gabriel belong to Shane Abbess and Matt Hylton Todd.

She felt a hand press down over the wound on her chest, and warmth spread through her body just as she began to let go of herself and fall into the darkness of death.

The warmth spreads and expands into a blinding light that encompasses her. She recognises the light, the warmth, and understands its meaning. It draws shock out of her and leaves her wondering, _why_?

Just as suddenly she can feel him all around her, and she knows what he has done. Death and darkness fade into a dull grey nothingness, that becomes brighter and brighter – just like the flash of light – until she has to shut her eyes – her true eyes – from the overwhelming dizziness that takes hold.

When she opens her eyes again, she is not lying on a derelict rooftop on an unnamed building in Purgatory. Around her, fields of thick green grass are soft beneath her bare feet.

It is not real; the image exists purely in her mind.

The implication of what is happening weighs heavily on Gabrielle as she takes a tentative step forward. Above her, the clouds roll, and suddenly there is rain all around her, soaking her through the flimsy white linen her clothes are made of. It is clean and fresh and so unlike the rain in Purgatory.

Despite the knowledge of the illusion, she tentatively sticks her tongue out and catches the drops on her tongue.

She blinks her eyes clear of the rain that rolls down her cheeks and then Michael is standing opposite her. Watching.

He looks different. He shouldn't – she does not have a frame of reference for his human appearance before Purgatory. But his soul is clearer, more the Michael who had taught her everything he knew.

This is his doing that much she knows.

He used the last of his strength to save her and pull her into this place for one last exchange. It was a side-effect of the gift of healing bestowed upon them, one that Gabrielle ignored when she used her own healing ability. Michael had once explained that it was there to heal the mind as much as the body.

This moment in the real world could be an eternity in her mind, should they choose it.

Suddenly she is not surprised that Michael used it.

"Why did you bring me here?" Her voice is soft, and distant. The betrayal was at the forefront of her mind, and even now she struggled with forgiveness. It was through self-control that she kept her anger from boiling over.

His eyes are blue once more; the Arc she knew living inside the skin of a human. "I love you too much to die with your hatred."

Gabrielle wrapped her arms around herself. She felt exposed, laid bare in her mind for him to see. Here she had no protection. She simply was.

Her response was uncompromising. "You should have thought of that before you murdered your brothers," she reminded him. "Your own kind. The Michael I remember – the Michael who taught me _everything_ I know – would never have wanted power."

Tears stung her eyes.

For a moment she saw true remorse behind his eyes, flicking in his soul. "You could never understand, Gabrielle, what I did for you. To protect _you_. To keep you safe. It was never my intention to harm you."

"And yet you have!"

He stepped forward. She held her ground. He could no more harm her here than in the physical world where his body was poised on the brink of death and hers on the verge of life. She was not afraid of him – she never had been, not even staring into her death at his hands.

His hand was warm on the skin of her cheek. "Even in anger, you are beautiful," he told her, and the intensity he held in his eyes caused her to look away.

"Everything you taught me," she whispered, "everything we ever fought for, does it now come down to this legacy?" She turned her head back, and met his gaze, now unwavering. "We are servants of the Light. We were sent there to protect those who did not know any better."

Michael cupped her face. "You are still young, Gabrielle, and you have spent less time in Purgatory than any of the other Arcs. You saw what it did to them, what it did to me."

She pulled his hand away from her face. "You were the strongest of all of us. You let yourself forget the Light and the purpose of your mission. You became everything we fought against, for all these years."

His eyes hardened. "That is your cause now, not mine. I found my freedom – what could have been yours, too, should you have let it – from orders. I wanted to share that with you. You were always the strongest of the others."

Gabrielle kept her face impassive, and didn't reply.

"Now you are all that's left," he added, filling the silence that stretched out for miles between them. "The last Arc."

"Eventually there will be more," she reminded him. "We were not the first."

Her words had little effect.

"No other will have experienced as much as you. You will need to decide what to do with your victory. Will you return to the Light and remain subservient? Will you stay in Purgatory and rule? How easy is the choice now, after everything you've seen and felt?"

Michael's words fell on her, harder than the rain falling from the clouds. She didn't like the way they made her feel uncomfortable – she doubted her resolve; she had ever since her brothers had been killed and she had retaliated with such brutality. She had felt the need for revenge, for blood, and she had liked it.

Then despair had set in after she had beaten Asmodeus. A despair that returned now.

As much as she wanted to rail against Michael's words, to denounce them as false, she could not. How could she return to what she was before all of this?

"I can't even ask your advice, now," she murmured, looking past him, over his shoulder at the hazy, cloud-filled horizon. She did not trust it.

In the blink an eye he was right in front of her, pressing a kiss to her forehead; an action as intimate as it was familiar. It was a goodbye. Then he was gone, his words echoing around her. "You stand now where I stood."

Light flashed, and then the world was black.

And wet.

She gasped in air that burned its way down her throat.

Michael's hand was a dead weight on her chest and she lay there a moment longer, unmoving, staring up at the gray clouds. A tiny pinprick of light appeared through the cloud coverage.

Time passed, and the clouds slowly parted.

She watched from the edge of the rooftop as the city below woke.

She looked to the sky, and the Light beyond.

She spread her arms, and let herself fall away from safety.


End file.
